Alien story

The University, in response to complaints from some of the professors and general staff, produced an official statement which spoke of cosmic brotherhood, shared knowledge between the galaxies, and the necessity of good diplomacy in order to avoid the possibility of interstellar conflict. The professors and general staff read this statement, and muttered to one another that it was definitely a question of the money and publicity the University would accrue with such exotic students.

          The aliens said nothing; only repeated that they had come here to learn.

          The next problem was the question of precisely what the aliens should be taught. The Department of Biochemistry made some enemies by suggesting that they take on the newcomers. Had Professor McGarrick considered, yelled the Deputy Head of Engineering, exactly what these creatures might do with a basic understanding of earth biochemistry? Supposing they used it to create a poisonous vapour which spread across the world and enslaved our species? (Professor McGarrick, slumping back in his chair, was heard to mutter something rather nasty about the Deputy Head of Engineering's basic understanding of anything.)

          The deputation returned to the spaceship, a towering heap of lunacy perched on top of the student’s union, and asked if the aliens could be a little more specific.

          The aliens said that they had come here to learn, and eventually the professors were able to draw up a detailed term schedule, comprised of all the major faculities- except for some which might have been considered too dangerous, complicated or treasonous.

          Meanwhile, the student population was becoming restless. Someone was heard to mutter in the Varsity bar,

          I wouldn’t mind them, you know, if they only fucking integrated.

          One student reported, pale and shivery, that she’d wandered into their room unexpectedly and disturbed them making love, the inch-high male thrusting his curious head in and out of the stooping female’s ear. Others grumbled that the enormous female would be too tall to fit into the lecture theatres, ‘and it’s too much of a squash in those chairs as it is’. A malicious email circulated, to the effect that a great war was now raging on the aliens’ homeworld, and that the two exchange students who’d been sent there would almost certainly never be seen again.

          The aliens, meanwhile, formed a student society, called BrellaSoc, where fans of umbrella-making or anyone interested in learning more about the process of umbrella-making could congregate and make umbrellas. Nobody attended, but the aliens sat in the Chaplaincy for an hour every Tuesday anyway.  The female, her enormous arms trembling, snapped the metal rods together while the male danced back and forth across her shoulders, sewing up the waterproof skin with tiny dextrous fingers.

          It was something of a relief for everyone concerned, four minutes into the first lecture (on the importance of Brecht as a means to understanding the cane toad) when the aliens stood up, gave a loud, decisive cry, and pitched over dead.

          The lecturer made a quip about having never realised his lectures were that bad. He got a laugh.

          The bodies were burnt, of course, and the spaceship (since nobody could figure out how to work it) was quietly integrated into the design of the new student’s union as a bold and exciting work of art.

: 17 Jan 2009 14:03 |  Comments (3) |  Report a problem